Brad Hickey's Wine Odyssey

A "Grand Moment" At Pierre Gagnaire

Before there was Heston Blumenthal, there was Pierre Gagnaire. The "enfant-terrible" of French cooking has kept pace with the molecular gastronomy boys by running a restaurant facing the future, but respectful of the past. We recently ate there with close friends of mine from the early Paris days. We had all come a long way since then, and sharing a fantastic degustation menu at Gaganire's eponymous restaurant in Paris on a snowy night was the ideal setting for the birth of, as the French say, "un grand moment". Mr. Gagnaire was present, he stopped by our table twice in chef garb to answer questions posed by our lone professor of DH Lawrence. My friend was into it! Gagnaire signed things and moved on. Still, always nice to see the man backing up his cooking, even though it's done by other people, of course. We drank a gorgeous 2001 Chambolle 1er Cru "Les Fuees" from J.F. Mugnier. To this date I wish we drank that wine all night. Finishing with Haut-Brions second, Bahan du Haut Brion 2001, we were happily working thru our menu. Both wines were seductive, delicious and ready for 2001s. I liked the sommeliers there, as well. Nice kids, in training, but they were friendly and aware of what their job was. Dr. Matthews and I got a tour of the upstairs cellar. The whole thing reminded me of my youth at Lespinasse. A time when I was thoroughly concerned with the differences between Puilgny-Montrachet and Chassagne. Now I drink Geoff Weaver Chardonnay, which holds its own compared to both Burgundian white wines. The degustation menu was good. There were not as many memorable dishes as we had at the Fat Duck, in fact the dish I remember most was the meal's great failure, a cold chicken noodle dish that was gelatinous and not appealing on a snowy-freezing-winter-Napoleonic-march-thru-Russia-night. However, it was still a great meal in the clubby lamp lit dining room, and the service was top notch. My vegetarian friend, Mr.John, had the experience of his life. That rarely happens for him; especially in France. He was treated to a dazzling array of dishes. We saw the night out with Calvados from Camut, 35 years old, and perfect. I used to buy it for Bouley Restaurant from Michael Skurnik, but I never realized how great it was until I was in someone else's fancy dining room in Paris, and firmly in the moment. Un Grand Moment? Oui, je croix. Much happened after dinner, as nobody wanted to go to sleep. Roy Orbison kept people up and in an hommage to Blue Velvet, the boys sang "Crying" to my now cross-eyed field of vision. Good stuff, and this last picture, Modest Mouse vs. Poseidon, still kills me.

The Fat Duck: Pleasure, the Brain, and Food

One of the highlights of my recent trip to England was a meal at The Fat Duck outside London in the tiny hamlet of Bray. Considered one of the top restaurants in the world, the Duck not only lived up to its reputation, it exceeded it. Chef and owner Heston Blumenthal has created truly unusual flavor pairings and a playful dining experience akin to a Post doctoral thesis on the art of eating. Memory is one of the key elements to his thesis. A number of creations were reminiscent of childhood favorites, like the Nitro Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream as a dessert. The sweet and salty maple syrup and bacon combined with the custardy texture of egg ice cream is a transporting experience that took me back to those carefree nights in my youth when we had breakfast for dinner. We were presented with a raw oyster with horseradish and passionfruit jelly, a snail porridge, and a parsnip breakfast cereal, like "Special K", with parsnip milk. These were just a few dishes which challenged your notion of what sounds like it would taste good. And they all were delicious. A large white plate with two tiny, precisely crafted, colored squares-one red, one orange-that seemed minimalist against the large white plate. We looked to our waiter for guidance. "Monsieur, madame. These are Orange and Beetroot Jellies. May I suggest you begin with the orange..." The orange colored one tastes of beetroot and the deep beet red purple jelly of orange. Surprise! As Blumenthal says in his beautiful cookbook, "The Big Fat Duck Cookbook", "This is meant to be fun. The food at the Fat duck must taste delicious-that's the guiding principle-but I don't see why a dish can't also engage the emotions, provoking curiosity, amusement or even a childlike sense of wonder. So with the jellies there is the bathos of size: the excitement of the menu with its mouthwatering ingredients, the waiter's grey-suited gravitas, the delicate, handcrafted tableware-all devoted to the peerless presentation of...two miniscule morsels of food. And there's the color swap, with its playful sabotage of expectations. It's a marvelous moment-the realisation that things are not what they seem." And later, on the inspiration for the jellies, "this poorly policed border between fruit and veg seemed to have potential." And of course, the jellies tapped into memory, as well: "Nostalgia, for example, has a huge influence on how we approach a dish. It's possible that the jellies' charm draws on memories of childhood...made all the more potent in the unlikely context of a three-star restaurant." (p.140) Also employed are the pairing of scientific terminology with classic food names: roast foie gras 'benzaldehyde', nitro-poached green tea and lime mousse, ballotine of mackerel invertebrate, onion and thyme fluid gel, the above mentioned nitro-scrambled egg, and ice-filtered lamb jelly. The fusion of modern science and classic menu items was nicely juxtaposed, much like the IM Pei's massive glass pyramid set in the heart of the classical beauty of the Louvre's courtyard in Paris. A much talked about dish, "The Sound of the Sea", is served with an Ipod nano in a conch shell. You are instructed to put on the headphones and listen to, yes, the sound of the ocean crashing on the shore and seagulls cawing in the distance. Does the sound affect the flavors of the fresh oyster, razor clam and seaweed on the glass platter? I think it does. It's certainly a fun experiment and sets your focus squarely on the dish in front of you. These dishes were matched perfectly with an Austrian riesling from Nikolaihof, the profoundly focused 2004 Steiner Hund Reserve for 75 pounds. For red I selected a 2002 Pommard "Premier Cru" Burgundy from Comte Armand which was delicious for 140 pounds. The list is a heavy 53 page tome, and full of the big names from France and Italy. Bargains are hard to find, but that wasn't really the point here at the Duck. I tend to resist wine pairings for long tasting menus, although I'm sure the Duck's was inventive. They were on to using sakes which was a good sign. The food was so original, however, that I didn't think we needed to be distracted by a sommelier prancing around like Martin Short's "Ed Grimley" character from SCTV, I must say.